


How Odd

by eeb



Category: Original Work
Genre: Africa, Gen, Short Story, Stereotypes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 23:38:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16963656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eeb/pseuds/eeb
Summary: Have you ever thought about how you generalise people? Think they're diseased, poor, backward? Just because of where they're from?This is a short story. I highly encourage you to read it if you, like many others, couldn't even imagine an African leading a normal life.





	How Odd

The flight to Boston was long and exhausting. But she was ready for this. After all, hadn’t she worked hard to get to this point in life? What hadn’t she endured to sit aboard this flight? While her classmates went out clubbing, she stayed in her dorm reading and re-reading, her eyes moving so fast across the pages she must’ve looked manic. They would tease her, they would mock her high ambitions- ‘Who studies this hard to go to a place where you’re just another grain of dirt on their soles?’. But she knew America wasn’t how they thought it was. She had heard all about this thing called The American Dream from storybooks; it was something heavenly, something easy to see and just a little hard to reach. It guaranteed happiness. This is what Rosine wanted desperately and she didn’t mind that it made her forget everything else in life. When she grabbed a hold of The American Dream, nothing else would matter anyway. 

 

When she was younger, maybe five or six, Rosine would ask her mother- ‘Why do you cry?’. Her large honey brown eyes looked curiously at her mother and her mother would be taken aback, not sure what to say. ‘Why do you cry, Mama?’ Rosine would ask again. ‘I do not cry, my dear.’, and her mother would smile. This reply satisfied the mind of young Rosine. But as she grew older, she would frown and think about it some more and finally one day she understood that her mother was lying. ‘I always see drops of tears coming from your eyes Mama. I see them when you say goodnight to me, when you tuck me in, when you look at me as you close the door thinking my eyes are not open. But I see. I always see you cry Mama.’ And that was the day that her mother cried in front of her young daughter, the child she had to take care of by herself, the girl she wanted to see succeed but knew she could not do anything for because of how alone she was. It was only a few days after that that Rosine made up her mind; she would not allow her mother to cry anymore. 

 

She studied hard to get to America. What did she study? She studied law. Why did she study this? Because it touched the strings of her heart and it was this heart that to this day only sympathised with her mother and it was this heart that wanted to bring peace and justice and all the other good things law (and subsequently, The American Dream) covered for her fragile mother. But it was hard studying this in Goma, which was not even the capital city of a country unknown to all but Africans - The DRC. She loved the quiet hum of traffic outside her bedroom window, loved hearing the chatter of her neighbors, and like everybody else in her neighborhood, despised the loafers who came around every morning asking for cigarettes. But who cares about this? She made up her mind that she would not mention this part of her life (however large it was) to the people in America; she did not want them to wrongfully believe she was the ‘black sheep’ of African women, the only one who grew up normally and was educated and knew how to take care of her family on her own. 

 

And thus, she studied hard and got herself on board a flight to Boston, where a scholarship to Boston University School of Law was waiting for her. She did not consider herself lucky, since luck was what people had when they didn’t work hard for something and still got it. Nevertheless, she was astonished by the beauty of the city and the university, as well as the apartment given to her, and always thanked the people who got her to where she was- namely, her lovely mother and herself. 

 

She would go to the coffee shop every morning before classes. It was small, rustic, and smelt not of coffee, but of cakes and pastries. Rosine enjoyed watching the Americans converse as she sipped steaming coffee, and it never occurred to her that everyday she would overlook something very important as she stepped through the doors of the small shop. It was a small bundle of sadness hunched over by the door, and its name was Ella Hayes. Rosine learnt this the day that she finally noticed the frail woman and looked at the tattered sign sitting in front of her- ‘My nam is Ella Hayes. Old woman. Plese help’. Ella Hayes was heaving, coughing, and sputtering. Rosine continued into the shop. 

 

Now, she had a heart. But she did not know what to do. She had always heard that America was the land of opportunities, that everyone had a chance at The American Dream. So why was this woman left on the streets? Why didn’t she have a house and medicine and a family, like all the Americans do? 

 

The next day, when she crossed the street to the coffee shop, she stopped for a while. Ella Hayes looked up, possibly surprised at this attention. They locked eyes. Ella Hayes’ face passed a look of bewilderment and she quickly looked away. Ella Hayes did not believe in hope. Ella Hayes had not believed in it for a long time. Rosine stepped through the doors of the tiny shop, and the waves of delicious smells swamped Ella Hayes, as if they were a reminder of what she could not have. 

 

No, Rosine had a heart. She cared for her mother. And over time, she could not bear the poor condition of Ella Hayes, a woman who reminded her of her own pitiful mother, despite the fact that Ella Hayes was white and her mother was black and her mother had a house and Ella Hayes did not. 

 

‘What is wrong, Ella Hayes?’. Ella Hayes’ neck almost snapped with how quick she looked up, and her eyes widened simultaneously. This was three weeks after they locked eyes, and Ella Hayes looked around frantically. It was very likely that she did not believe she was alive anymore and that possibly this was Heaven, where she was finally being acknowledged. Rosine stepped closer and put a hand on the poor woman’s shoulder. ‘Why do you cry, Ella Hayes?’. And instead of denying like her mother many years ago, Ella Hayes burst into loud sobs. She began to kiss Rosine’s hand repeatedly, and Rosine’s back hurt from being hunched over and her stomach grumbled from not having eaten breakfast. Nevertheless, she allowed the dirty and feeble woman to plant wet kisses on the top of her hand, and felt tears well up in her own eyes. 

 

She blinked back the tears. She had never cried in front of her mother, no matter how vulnerable and emotional her mother became in front of her. And so it just made sense in Rosine’s mind that she could not cry in front of Ella Hayes.

 

She visited Ella Hayes everyday after that. Ella Hayes was beyond surprised when she learned Rosine Banza was from Congo and not an African American. Besides for bursts of emotions, Ella Hayes did not speak and this comforted Rosine. It allowed her to know that her help was so needed that this woman did not need words to explain her feelings. 

 

It made Rosine feel the kind of warmth that engulfs you from a fireplace on a chilly evening- the kind of warmth she had hoped to find in The American Dream but instead found in a homeless American woman.

 

How odd. 

  
  



End file.
